Today's Swedish vocabulary. Small pine trees, monsters.

I've reached that stage in learning Swedish when I'm apt to produce lists like this, at first in a not wholly vain attempt to absorb unmemorable vocab, but soon slipping  into a fantasy of encompassing the essense of a language in a single page. These are words or phrases that I've had some reason to tussle with in the past few days; things I've read, mainly. 

ordförråd -- vocabulary. (förråd -- store, stock)

oavsett  -- regardless

beträffar -- concerns

Varför då? -- Why?

Varför då då? -- Why, then?

I själva verket -- As a matter of fact

Sanningen att säga,.. -- To tell the truth, ...

nuläget -- the current situation

dagsläget -- the current situation

överklagades -- was appealed against (klaga -- complain)

ta emot -- receive

emotse, motse -- await   

förutsättning -- prerequisite   (förut -- before)

tillit -- trust (cf lita på) 

egentlig -- real, true  (also riktig, verklig, faktisk)

verksamhet -- activity, work

unna -- to not begrudge someone something

återhämtning -- recovery

oemotståndlig -- irresistible

myndigheterna -- the authorities (myndig -- commanding, authoritative)

minska  -- tr. reduce, itr. decrease, lessen, decline. Related to minst -- smallest, least

utsatt -- exposed, vulnerable. Used to describe utsatta områden (the vulnerable areas), as designated by police in 2015. These are areas with high poverty and crime, often said to be linked to radicalization and a sense of separation from the rest of Swedish society. 

tillfallet -- the case

tillåtelse -- permission

tillstånd -- a permit. It also means a state, e.g. undantagstillstånd -- state of emergency.

förfrågan -- inquiry

återge -- reproduce (e.g. text)

ange -- state, mention, note

upphovsrätt -- copyright (noun). The adjective is upphovsrättslig. Upphov -- origin, source. Upphovsman -- originator, author, instrigator. 

begränsning -- limitation, restriction

enkom -- solely, purposely, especially, expressly 

martall, margran, marbjörk: small twisted or damaged trees, e.g. dwarf pine. According to SAOB the first element is related to "mara", the witchlike being who causes nightmares (mardrömmar). 

knyta -- to tie, untie (knyta till, knyta upp). Also used to describe the formation in plants of a head or heart or tuber or fruit. "Kålen knyter i goda år fasta hufvuden." "Bönderna började äta äpplen och päron, så snart de knutit sig."

kuva -- subdue (feelings), repress, curb. 

*

The last part was to do with trying to translate a knotty poem by Karin Boye. 

Martall

Här i evig blåst

pinar sig martall upp ur stenen,

kröker sig trött,

knyter sig trotsig,

kryper kuvad.

Svarta mot kvällens stormhimmel

tecknar sig vridna spökkonturer.

Vidunder grips av leda

för vidunder.

Går ett stönande genom de rivna kronorna:

O att se en enda gång

rak emot ljuset

stiga en kungaek,

en gossebjörk,

en gyllene jungfrulönn.

Göm dina drömmar, krympling.

Här är de yttersta skären. Så långt ögat når:

martall. 

Here's the best I can do so far. 

stunted pine

here in endless wind

the stunted pine struggles out of the stone

cowering wearily

knitting itself obstinately

and creeping curbed

black against the evening's stormy sky

outlines of twisted ghost contours

deformity is gripped by revulsion

at deformity

a groaning passes through the riven crowns

oh just once to see

straight up into the light

a kingly oak ascend

a boy-birch

a golden girl-maple

hide your dreams cripple

these are the outermost skerries 

as far as the eye can see

stunted pine.

(Karin Boye, from For the tree's sake (1935))

The main translator problem concerns the word vidunder, which means "monster" or "monsters". The difficulty is to do with cultural change as much as language. 

We're no longer comfortable with the kind of thinking that expresses a pejorative view of people or animals or even trees on the basis of form or appearance. Neither "monster" (conveying visceral horror), nor "cripple", are part of a progressive person's vocabulary.  

That in itself doesn't matter. This is a poem from another era and I don't want to disguise it. 

The English word "monster" still thrives, of course, but in contexts that are distinctly out of key with Boye's poem.

For instance, it's often used as a colourful way of saying "very big" or "very overwhelming": a monster truck, or monster bassline. But a connotation of large size doesn't sit very well in a poem about small, dwarf or stunted pines. 

And when "monster" does refer to a monster, it tends to be in contexts appealing to children. For instance Monster Munch (corn snacks shaped like monsters); or Super Monsters, the Netflix animation for young children ("material unlikely to cause offence") in which charming big-eyed kids flip into charming big-eyed monsters and have the gentlest of adventures. Like modern halloween, the programme appeals to children's love of dressing up and role playing. It also carries a social message: that differentness is to be enjoyed and celebrated, that it's OK to look different. It seeks to defuse the atavistic idea of a "monster" and to make it fun, to purge it of monstrosity. And thus for the best of reasons it seeks to rid society of the sensation of monstrosity that Karin Boye's poem is all about. 

So I felt that "monster" was now a word with exactly the wrong kind of associations. Instead I've used the word "deformity", but I'm not particularly happy with the result. 

*

While thinking about this issue with vidunder, I noticed the word again while leafing through Vredgade vittnen (Angry Witnesses, 1966), an anthology of post-civil-war Spanish poetry translated into Swedish by Francisco J. Uriz and Artur Lundkvist. 

The poem was by Dámaso Alonso (1898 - 1990) and I think it's an interesting pairing. It's from his 1944 collection Hijos de la ira (Children of Wrath). 

Alonso's Spanish text "Monstruos" is here. However,  my text re-translates the Swedish ("Vidunder"). 

Monsters

Each day when I get up 

I make this prayer:

O God, 

don't torment me any more.

Tell me what they mean,

these horrors that encircle me.

I'm hemmed round by monsters

who mutely ask me 

just what I'm asking you.

Who maybe ask you too,

and like me vainly disturb

the silence in your unchanging night

with my heart-wrenching question.

In the stars' half-dusk,

in the sunlight's terrible darkness

hostile eyes spy on me,

grotesque forms keep watch on me,

wounding colours lay traps for me:

it's the monsters, 

I'm hemmed round by monsters!

They don't devour me,

they devour my longed-for rest,

they force me to be an anguish that engenders itself,

they make me into a man,

a monster among monsters. 

No, nothing is as terrifying

as this frantic Dámaso, 

as this yellow centipede when he with all his tentacles

            invokes you madly,

as this indwelling beast

when it melts into a flux of anguish.

No, nothing so monstrous

as this vermin that howls unto you,

as this heart-wrenching question

that now affronts you with vociferous groans,

that now says to you:

-- O God,

don't torment me any more,

tell me what they mean,

these monsters that encircle me

and their inner terror that moans to you in the night.

Alonso's poem is a discovery: It is I who am the monster. 

Likewise, though more implicitly, Boye's poem is self-directed: the horror of deformity is her own agonizing consciousness of failing to measure up to an ideal form.

*

Tomas Tranströmer was less spooked than Karin Boye when he wrote about this bog pine: 

Den låga tallen på myren håller upp sin krona: en mörk trasa.

Men det man ser är ingenting

mot rötterna, det utspärrade, dolt krypande, odödliga eller halvdödliga

rotsystemet.

The squat pine in the swamp holds up its crown: a dark rag.

But what you see is nothing

compared to the roots, the widespread, secretly creeping, immortal or half-mortal 

root system.

(from "Några minuter" ("A few minutes") in the collection Mörkerseende (1970), translation by Robin Fulton)

And Evert Taube's martall is positively celebratory:

Men hej, alla vänner som gästa min ö!

Jag är både nykter och klok!

När morgonen gryr skall jag vålma mitt hö

och vittja tvåhundrade krok.

Fördöme dig, skymning, och drag nu din kos!

Det brinner i martallens topp!

Här dansar Calle Schewen med Roslagens ros,

Han dansar när solen går opp!

But hey, all you good friends who visit my isle,

I ’m not quite so mad as I look!

Tomorrow I’ll have my hay hung up to dry

and sift through my two hundred hooks.

It's time for you, night-time, to give up the ghost,

It burns in the stunted pine's top!

Calle Schewen is dancing with Roslagen’s rose,

he’s dancing as sunrise comes up!

(from his song "Calle Schewen's Waltz" (1936))

Here's Axel Borg, also on the skerries, in August Strindberg's novel I havsbandet (By the Open Sea, 1890):

Nu hörde han måsarna skrika och förstod därav att hon summit ut. Han klädde sig därför hastigt, och sedan han samlat sina saker, plockade han fram ur båtgarneringen till en liten frukost, vilken han dukade på mossan under en halvstammig pinjeliknande tall.

Now he heard the gulls screaming and realised that she must have swum out. He therefore dressed himself hurriedly and after collecting his belongings he took out of the boat's hold a little picnic and laid it out on the moss under a pine with a short trunk which looked like a stone-pine. 

(from Chapter 6, translation by Mary Sandbach). 

In the following chapter, Axel actually cuts down a group of these native pines, and carves and wires the only remaining one into the umbrella shape of a stone pine: it's all part of his bizarre plan to fake the mirage of an Italian landscape, up here in the Baltic. 

Get ready for some linguistic tangles.  

The Swedish word tall is the general-purpose word for the native pine Pinus sylvestris, the same species that is called Scots Pine in the UK. In Norwegian the equivalent term is furu and in Danish fyrretræ. 

[Obviously these latter words are related to the word "fir", a word that is used in conflicting ways by English speakers. By some it's used to mean conifers in general, by others to mean conifers with needles (e.g. not cypresses), by others to mean pine trees specifically (Lambert's treatise calls our tree the Scotch Fir), and by still others to mean all needle trees except pines. Among modern botanists, on the other hand, it means the genus Abies (aka the Silver Firs -- this is the meaning you'll see if you look up Fir on Wikipedia -- a large genus but with no species native to the UK or Scandinavia); also sometimes the New World genus Pseudotsuga (the Douglas Firs).]

Anyway, back to Scandinavia. Swedish also has "fir" words, but they aren't used for the species in general. Fura means a tall long-boled pine, and furu means pine timber, the material you make furniture out of. Meanwhile the Norwegian word tall or toll means a young pine tree. 

SAOB speculates that tall is related to a dialect word tull, which means a young sapling (pine or spruce), especially with reference to the use of the tender shoots (this year's growth) as food for animals, and sometimes people (e.g. to flavour beer or brännvin). So, as often with vernacular tree names, the word origin may go back to some cultural use of the tree. (Like those tree names that originally referred to the tree's fruits: oak, apple, cherry, etc.)

In the Strindberg quotation above, you can see that Swedish also has a "pine" word, pinje, but it means specifically the Stone Pine (Pinus pinea), which might be one of the main Mediterranean species that the Latin word pinus originally designated. 

*

Tall (Scots Pine). Illustration from C.A.M. Lindman's Nordens flora (1901-1905).

It's always worth consulting C.A.M. Lindman's Nordens flora (1901-1905, here in a text revised by Magnus Fries) -- Here's the entry for TALL.  Hopefully I give the general sense but I've unpacked  his long paragraphs and tried to disentangle most of the incapsulation* common in Swedish technical writing. 

The tall or fura (pine, i.e. Scots Pine, Pinus sylvestris) is an impressive conifer. It has a trunk that in favourable conditions for growth is as slender and straight and twig-free as a mast, ascending right up to the crown, which is borne on a few large boughs. It attains a height of 25 - 30 meters, sometimes even 35 meters.

In its upper part it has yellow-red bark, which together with the white trunks of the birches gives to the Nordic woodlands a rare beauty of colour. The pine foliage appears grey-green or blue-green when compared with the spruce's.  [i.e. Norway Spruce, the other large conifer of the Nordic woods.]

One of the features that distinguish the genus Pinus is the strong dimorphism (difference of form) between the shoots. The needles are in pairs (up to five in certain other pine species) on very small "short shoots", which also have a number of membranous brown-grey lower leaves. The short shoot is produced by the long shoot, which bears scattered leaves of a wholly different form, reduced to scales.(See Fig. 2). 

The species of Pinus can also be recognized by the cone scales, which are thicker towards their tips and appear abruptly sheared off with a wart in the centre. The pine cone ripens the year after flowering, in contrast to spruce cones which ripen in the same year. 

The pine is monoecious¤ and wind-pollenated like the spruce, but the young female cones, which (like the spruce) have purple-red scales, are no bigger than a pea (see Fig. 3). The male flowers (the small yellow spike-like groups of stamens, Fig. 5) are massed together to form an oval ring of blooms around the shoot. 

The pine has an extraordinary profusion of pollen, which at the time of flowering covers the ground and pools of water with a sulphur-yellow powder. This phenomenon has acquired the popular name "sulphur-rain". In lands where the pine is rarer than in the north this pollen has been seen on pools that are many miles from the nearest pine tree. Investigations of airborne pollen on lightships+ have shown that pine pollen can be transported a great distance out to sea; even on vessels in the middle of the Atlantic small quantities of pollen have been noted, for the most part pine pollen. 

The pine has deep roots, in contrast to the spruce's shallow spread of roots. It thrives in virtually all kinds of ground. But as a tall stemmed timber tree it prefers free-draining and hence dry and meagre situations, for instance on upland moraine soils, boulder ridges and glacial deltas. Typical plants of these tall-growing open pinewoods are lingon bushes (aka cowberry), ling heather and reindeer lichen. In boggy places the pine becomes dwarfed, i.e. the so-called martall, which at fifty years of age is no higher than a man and has a trunk the thickness of an ordinary walking stick. In general the pine attains a greater age than the spruce.# A pine felled in Dalarna in 1913 showed 654 annual rings. 

Within peatland, especially bogs, people have sometimes unearthed a layer of large pine stumps. These are remnants of pinewoods that in the more arid climate of the Bronze Age were able to grow on the dried-out surface of the peatlands. In the warm post-glacial period pines were able to grow a couple of hundred meters higher than today, as pine stumps found on bare mountainsides bear witness. 

Pine and spruce are our most important trees, economically speaking. Pine timber is firmer and tougher than spruce and lasts well because of its high resin content, particularly in underwater and pile construction.**

The pine occurs here in two forms with different distributions: a northern slender-crowned type (ssp. lapponica) and a southern, more broadly-crowned type (ssp. septentrionalis). The tree has a very extensive distribution in Nordic countries. But like the spruce it is absent from Denmark, large parts of Skåne and much of the southern and south-western coastal regions, as well as the south-westernmost and northernmost parts of Norway. Elsewhere the distribution stretches south of the arctic circle through Europe and northern Asia. The pine came to Nordic lands soon after the last ice age (c. 7000 BCE); as a forest-forming tree it was preceded only by the birch. 

* Incapsulation, also common in German. As a sample, here's a literal rendering of the opening, retaining the Swedish word order:

Genom sin stam, som vid gynnsam växt blir mastlikt smärt och rak och kvistfri ända upp till den av ett fåtal stora grenar uppburna kronan, är tallen eller furan ett imponerande barrträd.

Through its trunk, which with favourable growth becomes mastlikely slender and straight and twig-free right up to the of a few large boughs upborne crown, is the pine or fir an impressive conifer. 

¤ i.e. separate male and female flowers but produced on the same individual plant. In contrast with dioecious (male and female flowers on separate plants) and bisexual (the flowers have both male and female sex organs). The Swedish word for monoecious is sambyggare, which means "living together".

[By the way this handy symbol (¤) appears on Swedish keyboards as shift+4. I don't know what its real purpose is.]

+ The age of lightships is now basically gone. They were used in deep water in the days when existing technology didn't allow sinking foundations for a lighthouse to sufficient depth. There are still three unmanned lightships in use off the coast of Germany. 

# But (though I can't remember the exact details) I believe a Norway Spruce was recently proposed as the oldest living thing so far known -- not an individual tree, but a spreading subterranean root network putting up suckers. 

** Another obsolescent technology. Pile bridges were founded on long poles ("piles") driven into the loose ground until in firm contact with solid substrate. 

smärt -- slender, especially when referring to tall trees (more commonly it's a noun, "pain")

späd -- tender, of shoots  (cf spädbarn -- baby)

Notes on August Strindberg's A Dream Play (1901)

The Daughter, the Portress and the star-pattern bed-spread

[Image source: Theater pictures by Magda Molin. From a 1947 production at the Malmö Stadsteater, directed by Olof Molander. The Daughter was played by Inga Tidblad and the Portress by Jullan Kindahl. The Swedish Wikipedia entry on Ett drömspel says "Which side of Strindberg is emphasized is a question of the director's choice; while the modernist abstract side was emphasized by Max Reinhardt, Olof Molander placed greater emphasis on the realistic aspects in his sets of A Dream Play." Ingmar Bergman considered Molander his greatest inspiration as a theatre director. Molander's Strindberg productions were celebrated for their deep psychological power. The drama critic Herbert Grevenius wrote that Molander was famously dictatorial and unhappy, with a sadistic streak. During each production he would victimize one of the company.]

This post reads the Swedish text alongside Edwin Björkman's translation. None of the texts I've consulted organize the play into numbered acts or scenes; and that seems to be an important aspect of the dramaturgy, even though late in the play one of Strindberg's own SDs refers back to "the first scene of the first act" . Anyway these notes are in sequence and I'm sure you'll find your way if you know the play.

1.

Fonden föreställer molnkåpor liknande raserade skifferberg med slott och borgruiner

The background represents cloud banks that resemble corroding slate cliffs with ruins of castles and fortresses.

(Opening SD of the Prologue)

On 6 May 1901 Strindberg married for the third time, to the young actress Harriet Bosse. She walked out at the end of August after a quarrel, saying it was forever. Strindberg continued to write to her and she came back on October 5th. A Dream Play was written around this time. It was finished in November 1901, except for the scene with the coalheavers, added early in 1902. Later in 1902 the play was published.* 

But Strindberg made another addition in 1906, the verse Prologue. Bergman's TV version (see below) misses out the Prologue, except for a glimpse of this mysteriously powerful cloudscape. Then he jumps straight into the Daughter's conversation with the Glazier, like the 1902 text. 

A Dream Play was first performed in 1907, with Harriet Bosse playing the Daughter. She and Strindberg had been divorced since 1904 but they still retained some kind of relationship. 

fond = background. Useful vocabulary when reading stage directions!

raserade = rased, destroyed. 

skifferberg = shale or slate cliffs. 

slott and borg are more or less synonymous, the latter perhaps with more emphasis on the idea of a stronghold. 

2.

Modren: Den Schweiziske Robinson . . .

The Mother: Swiss Family Robinson . . .

The book that the Officer damaged as a boy (and for which his brother was punished). The word schweiziske (=Swiss) adopts German spelling (Schweiz / schweizerisch) but with a Swedish ending.  

3.

Det är synd om människorna!

Men are to be pitied.

(This is the Daughter's repeated comment, the play's leitmotiv. But it's not really a philosophical proposition. It's a much more homely expression in Swedish, unfortunately one for which English has no close equivalent. Poor mankind! or I'm so sorry for mankind! or It's so hard for mankind! (Or maybe humans or people ...) 

The word synd, outside this expression, means "sin" or "transgression". As here:

Dottern: Finns det icke angenäma plikter?

Advokaten: De bli angenäma när de äro uppfyllda . . .

Dottern: När de icke finnas mera . . . Plikt är således allt oangenämt! Vad är då det angenäma?

Advokaten: Det angenäma är synd.

Dottern: Synd?

Advokaten: Som skall straffas, ja! Har jag haft en angenäm dag och afton, så har jag helveteskval och ont samvete dagen efter.

The Daughter. Are there no pleasant duties?

The Lawyer. They become pleasant when they are done.

The Daughter. When they have ceased to exist—Duty is then something unpleasant. What is pleasant then?

The Lawyer. What is pleasant is sin.

The Daughter. Sin?

The Lawyer. Yes, something that has to be punished. If I have had a pleasant day or night, then I suffer infernal pangs and a bad conscience the next day.

4.

Fonden  dras upp; nu synes en ny fond föreställande en gammal ruskig brandmur. Mitt i muren är en grind som öppnar till en gång, vilken mynnar ut i en grön ljus plats, där en kolossal blå stormhatt (Aconitum) synes. Till vänster vid grinden sitter Portvakterskan med en schal över huvud och axlar virkande på ett stjärntäcke. Till höger är en affischtavla som affischören rengör; bredvid honom står en sänkhåv med grön skaft. Längre bort till höger är en dörr med lufthål i form av en fyrväppling. Till vänster om grinden stär en smal lind med kolsvart stam och några ljusgröna löv; därinvid en källarglugg.

The background is raised and a new one revealed, showing an old, dilapidated party-wall. In the centre of it is a gate closing a passageway. This opens upon a green, sunlit space, where is seen a tremendous blue monk's-hood (aconite). To the left of the gate sits THE PORTRESS. Her head and shoulders are covered by a shawl, and she is crocheting at a bed-spread with a star-like pattern. To the right of the gate is a billboard, which THE BILLPOSTER is cleaning. Beside him stands a dipnet with a green pole. Further to the right is a door that has an air-hole shaped like a four-leaved clover. To the left of the gate stands a small linden tree with coal-black trunk and a few pale-green leaves. Near it is a small air-hole leading into a cellar.

In A Dream Play the dream-like quality extends to the staging. There's a doubling and splitting of properties as well as characters. The portress' shawl and star-patterned bed-spread seem somehow to be one thing, at least symbolically. The billposter's net seems later to split in two; he tells the Daughter that he has a sänkhåv (=sink-net) and also a green sump (=a corf: immersed basket or box for keeping live fish or crayfish). 

Brandmur A fire wall (intended to stop fire spreading from one building to another). The significance, visually, is that it's a mainly blank wall without windows or door openings.  

There is a gatekeeper's lodge (portvakterskans rum), which is mentioned in a later SD, when this scene transforms into the Lawyer's office. The lodge must be where the Officer goes to use the telephone, and where the Daughter withdraws to talk with the Billposter. Did Strindberg forget to mention it here, or is it to be identified with the mysterious källarglugg that the play never refers to again?

Stormhatt (=storm hat) is the normal name for monkshood. In this case it's probably a dream-like enlarged version of the popular garden plant Aconitum napellus known in Sweden as Äkta Stormhatt (=True Storm Hat). This is "True" as contrasted with the native plant of Scandinavian fells, Nordisk Stormhatt (=Nordic Storm Hat, Aconitum lycoctonum)

Fyrväppling -- Yes, it means a lucky clover leaf with four leaflets. Though actually the normal Swedish word used in naming clover species is klöver. Väppling is used in the names of other leguminous species like melilot and kidney vetch. 

5.

Dottern: (böjer huvud mot bröstet) Icke de korta tonfallen, Axel!

The Daughter: (with bent head) Beware of the short accents, Axel!

That doesn't sound like English to me. A better translation would be "Not the sharp tone ..." or "Not the harsh tone ...". 

6.

Fagervik / Skamsund

Fairhaven / Foulstrand

The Daughter and the Officer think they are going to Fairhaven, but arrive at Foulstrand instead -- the place of quarantine. (The scene shifts to Fairhaven later.)

The form of the two Swedish placenames is highly credible. (In fact there really are a couple of Fagerviks in Sweden).  Vik means a bay or inlet or cove. Sund means any sort of strait (same as the English word "sound", but less restricted in its application). In this case it evidently refers to the strait that separates the two locations). So, literally, the names mean "Fair Cove" and "Shame Sound". 

The pair of places also appear in Strindberg's collection of stories Fagervik och Skamsund (1902). Strindberg based them on two locations in the northern Stockholm archipelago:  Furusund [=Fagervik] was a fashionable seaside resort at the time, its buildings and roads given fancy Italian names like Monte Bello and Venezia. It had restaurants, theatres, bathing and sports equipment.

Just across the strait, Köpmanholm on Yxlan [=Skamsund] was far less developed and less scenic, its hillsides clear-felled and scorched as the play describes. Archipelago pilots and teetotallers lived quietly here. 

Strindberg first came to Furusund in summer 1899, and later hired the summer villa Isola Bella with Harriet Bosse. This exclusive villa had once been the quarantine hospital!  By now the quarantine station had moved -- though not to Köpmanholm, but further north, to the island of Fejan (it was used for travellers from Russia or Finland during cholera outbreaks). 

The Furusund resort attracted many foreign visitors from Russia and Germany. With the First World War it fell into rapid decline. During the Second World War Furusund was once again used as a quarantine station, this time for refugees. 

7.

Inhabitants of Skamsund...

Karantänmästaren: Här bo de sjuka, däröver bo de friska!

Officern: Här äro väl bara fattiga då?

Karantänmästaren: Nej, mitt barn, här äro de rika! Se på den där på sträckbänken! Han har ätit för mycket gåslever med tryffel och druckit så mycket Bourgogne att fötterna gått i masur!

Officern: Masur?

Karantänmästaren: Han har fått masurfötter! . . . Och den där som ligger på guillotin; han har druckit Henessy så att ryggraden måste manglas ut!

Master of Quarantine: Here you find the sick; over there, the healthy.

The Officer: Nothing but poor folk on this side, I suppose.

Master of Quarantine: No, my boy, it is here you find the rich. Look at that one on the rack. He has stuffed himself with paté de foie gras and truffles and Burgundy until his feet have grown knotted.

The Officer: Knotted?

Master of Quarantine: Yes, he has a case of knotted feet. And that one who lies under the guillotine—he has swilled brandy so that his backbone has to be put through the mangle.

masur = an unusual growth form of birch (apparently genetic), also known as Karelian birch or curly birch, valued by woodcarvers for its mottled grain (somewhat resembling burl wood). SAOB doesn't record its use in a figurative sense, so it isn't surprising the Officer is rather confused. "Knotted" is perhaps a good translation. 

Pen-knife from my childhood, with masur birch handle

Henessy i.e. Jas Hennessy & Co, producers of >40% of the world's cognac, founded by the Irish Jacobite officer Richard Hennessy in 1765. 

8.

The Poet's fondness for mud. 

Karantänmästaren: Nej, han håller sig alltid i de högsta rymderna,så att han får en hemlängtan efter gyttjan . . . det gör huden hård som på svinen, att välta sig i dyn. Sedan känner han icke bromsarnes stygn!

Master of Quarantine: No, he is roaming about the higher regions so much that he gets homesick for the mud—and wallowing in the mire makes the skin callous like that of a pig. Then he cannot feel the stings of the wasps.

dy another word for mud, ooze, sludge (gyttja), especially in swamps and morasses. 

broms is actually a horse-fly, a stinging insect well-known to all Swedish lake-bathers. Horse-flies frequent sunny spots and are attracted to wet skin. 

stygn is a variant form of styng or sting. (It also means a stitch made with a needle.) 

9. 

In Fingal's cave. In Swedish the song of the waves is a sound incantation. The English translation doesn't really hint at this. 

Dottern: Tyst! Vågorna sjunga.

(Reciterar vid svag musik.)

Det är vi, vi, vågorna,

som vagga vindarne

till vila!

Gröna vaggor, vi vågor.

Våta äro vi, och salta;

likna eldens lågor;

våta lågor äro vi.

Släckande, brännande,

tvättande, badande,

alstrande, avlande.

Vi, vi, vågorna,

som vagga vindarne

till vila!

The Daughter: Hush! Now the waves are singing.

(Recites to subdued music.)

We, we waves,

That are rocking the winds

To rest—

Green cradles, we waves!

Wet are we, and salty;

Leap like flames of fire—

Wet flames are we:

Burning, extinguishing;

Cleansing, replenishing;

Bearing, engendering.

We, we waves,

That are rocking the winds

To rest!

10. The scene with the four Deans/Dekaner.

Dekanus För Juridiska Fakultaten: Hör, hon väcker själv tvivel om vår auktoritet hos de unga, och så anklagar hon oss att väcka tvivel. Är det inte en brottslig handling, frågar jag alla rätt-tänkande?

Alla Rätt-tänkande: Jo, det är brottsligt.

Dekanus För Juridiska Fakultaten: Alla rätt-tänkande människor ha dömt dig! --  Gå i frid med din vinning! Eljes . . .

Dottern: Min vinning? -- Eljes? Eljes vad?

Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence: Listen to her—she herself is making the young question our authority, and then she charges us with sowing doubt. Is it not a criminal act, I ask all the right-minded?

All the Right-Minded: Yes, it is criminal.

Dean of the Faculty of Jurisprudence: All the right-minded have condemned you. Leave in peace with your lucre, or else——

The Daughter: My lucre? Or else? What else?

Vinning . It does mean "winning" or "profit" or "gain", but it tends to be used pejoratively, implying greed. Björkman's "lucre" captures that pejorative overtone.

Eljes = else, otherwise. More commonly annars or i annat fall.

Lordkanslern: Vill dottern vara god och säga oss vad hon menat med denna dörröppning?

Dottern: Nej, go vänner! Om jag sade't, skullen I icke tro't.

Dekanus För Medicinska Fakulteten: Där är ju intet. 

Dottern: Du sade't. -- Men du förstod det intet.

Dekanus För Medicinska Fakulteten: Det är bosch vad hon säger.

Alla: Bosch!

\Lord Chancellor: Will the Daughter please tell us what she meant by having this door opened?

The Daughter: No, friends. If I did, you would not believe me.

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine: Why, then, there is nothing there.

The Daughter: You have said it—but you have not understood.

Dean of the Faculty of Medicine: It is bosh, what she says!

All: Bosh!

I = old-style/high-style pronoun meaning "you" (plural or addressed to a superior). More or less equivalent to ni in modern Swedish. Curiously, just like the English pronoun I, it was normally  capitalized. Maybe the idea, as far as Swedish was concerned, was to avoid confusion with the preposition i (in). At any rate when the old pronoun is not capitalized it always catches me out! (In even older texts it's sometimes printed as a capital "J", but is still pronounced "i".)

intet . Edwin Björkman's testimony is to be respected. He was a native Swede, born in 1866. His translation of the Daughter's response ("but you have not understood") interprets intet in the Daughter's response as meaning "not" (i.e. icke, inte). This is indeed a variant form recorded in the SAOB as found between 1521 and 1889. It would therefore have been unusual if not archaic in 1901. 

However Edward S. Franchuk  (Symbolism in the works of August Strindberg, p. 1111) rejects this translation, arguing that intet can only mean "nothing" (i.e. inget), as in the Dean's previous speech. He translates the Daughter's remark as "But you have understood the nothing". I.e. the physical universe is indeed nothing, but the key point is that you have understood this. 

If we go with Björkman for the primary sense, then the unusual word choice clearly signals that the Daughter is making a pun, referring to the Dean's use of intet. But I don't think that the secondary sense could then be Franchuk's, since the two senses would then be in stark contradiction ("you have not understood" and "you have understood"). Instead, the secondary sense might convey something like "But you have understood it to be nothing (though it isn't really)". 

So that's the choice, as I see it. 1. As per Björkman, but with an underlying secondary sense; or 2. as per Franchuk, and unambiguous. 

bosch = bosh, contemptible nonsense. Derived from Turkish; James Justinian Morier used it frequently in his novel Ayesha, The Maid of Kars (1834), and it became a fashionable word across Europe. 

*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASFsdP9CmVY

The above link is to Ingmar Bergman's 1963 TV version of Ett drömspel / A Dream Play, with English subtitles. (It's locked down so I can't embed it in this post, but you can watch it if you click on the link.) I've read somewhere that Bergman wasn't very happy with it, but I found it spellbinding. It's quite a faithful rendering; a far closer realization of the staging described by Strindberg than you're ever likely to witness in the theatre. 

*

The great Swedish composer Wilhelm Stenhammar wrote some eerie and wonderful incidental music for Per Lindberg's 1916 production of  Ett Drömspel (A Dream Play) in Gothenberg. Stenhammar's music was later turned into an 11-minute concert piece by Hilding Rosenberg. This is a 2018 recording by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Christian Lindberg. (Have patience! It begins very quietly indeed.)

*

* Here's the original text of Ett drömspel, as printed in 1902 (PDF):

https://litteraturbanken.se/txt/lb999200037/lb999200037.pdf

It uses the spelling of Strindberg's time. The quotations in this post come from a text that uses the modern system of Swedish spelling  (first proposed in 1906, and adopted for official publications in 1912, the year of Strindberg's death).  

Triton

 En la isla en que detiene su esquife el argonauta

del inmortal Ensueño, donde la eterna pauta

de las eternas liras se escucha: -- Isla de Oro

en que el tritón erige su caracol sonoro

y la sirena blanca va a ver el sol --, un día

se oye un tropel vibrante de fuerza y de harmonia.

Son los Centauros . . .

On the island where docks the skiff of the argonaut,

he of the immortal illusion, where the eternal guiding

of the eternal lyres is heard, -- the Isle of Gold,

on which the Triton raises his sonorous sea-shell,

and the white siren comes out to see the sun --, one day

is heard a thundering troop of force and of harmony.

It is the centaurs . . .

           QUIRON

Callada las bocinas a los tritones gratas,

calladas las strenas de labios escarlatas,

los carrillos de Eolo desinflados, digamos

junto al laurel ilustre de florecidos ramos

la gloria inmarcesible de las Musas hermosas

y el triunfo del terrible misterio de las cosas. . . .

           CHIRON

Stilled the pleasant horns of the tritons,

stilled the strains of the scarlet lips,

the cheeks of Aeolus deflated, let us speak

as one of the illustrious laurel of flowering branches,

the unfading glory of the beautiful Muses

and the triumph of the terrible mystery of things . . .

(from "Coloquio de los centauros" by Rubén Dario, Nicaraguan poet, 1867 - 1916)

[My text had a misprint: juto for junto. I toyed with the possible meaning "Jute" (Germanic colonist of Kent), and the possible meaning "Xuthus" (mythological brother of a different Aeolus), before finally doing the sensible thing and comparing online texts.]

Here's the original 1896 publication, with illustrations!

https://es.wikisource.org/wiki/P%C3%A1gina:Prosas_profanas_(1896).djvu/93

*

In the days which are now called the good days, although in reality they were very bad ones for a good many people, the greatest discovery of a great century was made, namely, that one could live more cheaply and better on other people's money than on the results of one's own efforts. Many, a great many, people had taken advantage of the discovery, and as no patent law protected it, it was not surprising that Levi should be anxious to profit by it, too, more particularly as he had no money himself and no inclination to work for a family which was not his own. He, therefore, put on his best suit one day and called on his uncle Smith.

"Oh, indeed! You have an idea," said Smith, "Let's hear it! It's a good thing to have ideas!"

"I have been thinking of floating a joint stock company."

"Very good. Aaron will be treasurer, Simon secretary, Isaac cashier, and the other boys book-keepers; it's a good idea! Go on! What sort of a company is it going to be?"

"I'm thinking of a marine insurance society."

"Indeed! So far so good; everybody has to insure his property when he goes on a voyage. But your idea?"

"This is my idea."

"I don't think much of it. We have the big society 'Neptune.' It's a good society. Yours would have to be better if you intend to compete with it. What would be the novelty in your society?"

"Oh! I understand! I should reduce the premiums and all the patrons of the 'Neptune' would come to me."

"That's better! Very well, then, the prospectus which I would print would begin in this way: 'As the crying need of reducing the marine insurance premiums has long been felt, and it is only owing to the want of competition that it has not yet been done, we, the undersigned, beg to invite the public to take up shares in the new society.... What name?"

"Triton."

"Triton? What sort of a chap was he?"

"He was a sea-god."

"All right, Triton. It will make a good poster! You can order it from Ranch in Berlin, and we will reproduce it in my almanac 'Our Country.' Now for the undersigned. First, of course, my name. We must have big, well-sounding names. Give me the official almanac."

Smith turned over the leaves for some time.

"A marine insurance company must have a naval officer of high rank. Let me see! An admiral."

(From August Strindberg (1849 - 1912),  The Red Room, Chapter XII, translation by Ellie Schleussner.)

It's a great chapter, a crash course in setting up a fraudulent company (Dickens readers will recall the Anglo-Bengalee), expressed with the snappy satirical joyousness that The Red Room abounds in. But I'm afraid Strindberg's choice of first names for Levi and his relatives was quite intentional. He was anti-Semitic, most of the time. (Eric Bentley characterizes Strindberg's anti-Semitism as "opportunistic and petty" -- more like Chopin's than Wagner's; but that's not mollifying.)

Arvid Falk's freedom

In Sweden I fell eagerly on this graphical version, by Per Demervall (originally published 1986-1988), of August Strindberg's early novel Röda rummet / The Red Room (1879). The cartoon format made nineteenth-century Swedish a bit less formidable, but not much. Strindberg's satire of Stockholm life is replete with difficult registers: bureaucratic pomposity, commercial dissimulation, political sloganism, intellectual pretension and intoxicated fury.

Having struggled through it, understanding barely half the text, I'm now reading the full novel in Ellie Schleussner's English translation, thanks to Gutenberg. I'll write more about it at some point. In the mean time, here's a few pages from Chapter 3, the same section that's shown above.

*

 CHAPTER III

THE ARTISTS' COLONY

It was between eight and nine o'clock on the same beautiful May morning. Arvid Falk, after the scene with his brother, was strolling through the streets, dissatisfied with himself, his brother, and the whole world. He would have preferred to see the sky overcast, to be in bad company. He did not believe that he was a blackguard, but he was disappointed with the part he had played; he was accustomed to be severe on himself, and it had always been drummed into him that his brother was a kind of stepfather to whom he owed great respect, not to say reverence. But he was worried and depressed by other thoughts as well. He had neither money nor prospect of work. The last contingency was, perhaps, the worse of the two, for to him, with his exuberant imagination, idleness was a dangerous enemy.

Brooding over these disagreeable facts, he had reached Little Garden Street; he sauntered along, on the left pavement, passed the Dramatic Theatre, and soon reached High Street North. He walked on aimlessly; the pavement became uneven; wooden cottages took the place of the stone houses; badly dressed men and women were throwing suspicious glances at the well-dressed stranger who was visiting their quarter at such an early hour; famished dogs growled threateningly at him. He hastened past groups of gunners, labourers, brewers' men, laundresses, and apprentices, and finally came to Great Hop-Garden Street. He entered the Hop-Garden. The cows belonging to the Inspector-General of Ordnance were grazing in the fields; the old, bare apple trees were making the first efforts to put forth buds; but the lime trees were already in leaf and squirrels were playing up and down the branches. He passed the merry-go-round and came to the avenue leading to the theatre; here he met some truant schoolboys engaged in a game of buttons; a little further a painter's apprentice was lying in the grass on his back staring at the clouds through the dome of foliage; he was whistling carelessly, indifferent to the fact that master and men were waiting for him, while flies and other insects drowned themselves in his paint-pots.

Falk had walked to the top of the hill and had come to the duck-pond; he stood still for a while, studying the metamorphoses of the frogs; watching the leeches; catching a water-spider. Then he began to throw stones. The exercise brought his blood into circulation; he felt rejuvenated, a schoolboy playing truant, free, defiantly free! It was freedom bought by great self-sacrifice. The thought of being able to commune with nature freely and at will, made him glad; he understood nature better than men who had only ill-treated and slandered him; his unrest disappeared; he rose and continued his way further into the country.

Walking through the Cross, he came into Hop-Garden Street North. Some of the boards were missing in the fence facing him, and there was a very plainly marked footpath on the other side. He crept through the hole, disturbing an old woman who was gathering nettles, crossed the large tobacco field where a colony of villas has now sprung up, and found himself at the gate of "Lill-Jans."

There was no doubt of its being spring in the little settlement, consisting of three cottages snugly nestling among elders and apple trees, and sheltered from the north wind by the pine-wood on the other side of the High Road. The visitor was regaled with a perfect little idyll. A cock, perched on the shafts of a watercart, was basking in the sun and catching flies, the bees hung in a cloud round the bee-hives, the gardener was kneeling by the hot-beds, sorting radishes; the warblers and brand-tails were singing in the gooseberry bushes, while lightly clad children chased the fowls bent on examining the germinative capacity of various newly sown seeds. A brilliant blue sky spanned the scene and the dark forest framed the background.

Two men were sitting close to the hot-beds, in the shelter of the fence. One of them, wearing a tall, black hat and a threadbare, black suit, had a long, narrow, pale face, and looked like a clergyman. With his stout but deformed body, drooping eyelids, and Mongolian moustache, the other one belonged to the type of civilized peasant. He was very badly dressed and might have been many things: a vagabond, an artisan, or an artist; he looked seedy, but seedy in an original way.

The lean man, who obviously felt chilly, although he sat right in the sun, was reading to his friend from a book; the latter looked as though he had tried all the climates of the earth and was able to stand them all equally well.

As Falk entered the garden gate from the high road, he could distinctly hear the reader's words through the fence, and he thought it no breach of confidence to stand still for a while and listen.

The lean man was reading in a dry, monotonous voice, a voice without resonance, and his stout friend every now and then acknowledged his appreciation by a snort which changed occasionally into a grunt and became a splutter whenever the words of wisdom to which he was listening surpassed ordinary human understanding.

"'The highest principles are, as already stated, three; one, absolutely unconditioned, and two, relatively unconditioned ones. Pro primo: the absolutely first, purely unconditioned principle, would express the action underlying all consciousness and without which consciousness cannot exist. This principle is the identity A—A. It endures and cannot be disposed of by thought when all empirical definitions of consciousness are prescinded. It is the original fact of consciousness and must therefore, of necessity, be acknowledged. Moreover, it is not conditioned like every other empirical fact, but as consequence and substance of a voluntary act entirely unconditioned.'"

"Do you follow, Olle?" asked the reader, interrupting himself.

"It's amazing! It is not conditioned like every other empirical fact. Oh! What a man! Go on! Go on!"

"'If it is maintained,'" continued the reader, "'that this proposition without any further proof be true....'"

"Oh! I say! What a rascal! without any further proof be true," repeated the grateful listener, bent on dissipating all suspicion that he had not grasped what had been read, "without any further reason, how subtle, how subtle of him to say that instead of simply saying 'without any reason.'"

"Am I to continue? Or do you intend to go on interrupting me?" asked the offended reader.

"I won't interrupt again. Go on! Go on!"

"Well, now he draws the conclusion (really excellent): 'If one ascribes to oneself the ability to state a proposition——'"

Olle snorted.

"'One does not propose thereby A (capital A), but merely that A—A, if and in so far as A exists at all. It is not a question of the essence of an assertion but only of its form. The proposition A—A is therefore conditioned (hypothetically) as far as its essence is concerned, and unconditioned only as far as its form goes.'

"Have you noticed the capital A?"

Falk had heard enough; this was the terribly profound philosophy of Upsala, which had strayed to Stockholm to conquer and subdue the coarse instincts of the capital. He looked at the fowls to see whether they had not tumbled off their roosts; at the parsley whether it had not stopped growing while made to listen to the profoundest wisdom ever proclaimed by human voice at Lill-Jans; he was surprised to find that the sky had not fallen after witnessing such a feat of mental strength. At the same time his base human nature clamoured for attention: his throat was parched, and he decided to ask for a glass of water at one of the cottages. . . .


*

Per Demervall's more recent realization, the Asterix-style adventures of Siri the Viking girl. This one is Siri och Mimers Brunn / Siri and Mimir's Well.

[Image source: https://seriersant.se/siri-och-mimers-brunn ]

broom-buoy

Stormigt hav. Ruskprick (August Strindberg, 1892)

[Image source: https://www.europeana.eu/portal/sv/explore/people/60469-august-strindberg.html ]

Today's unusual Swedish word. I was looking up kvast (which means broom) in my battered dictionary (Esselte Studium, 1983), and my eye fell on kvastprick : buoy (beacon) with broom . Hmm...

Well, here's one, in a stormy Strindberg seascape. As you can see, it's a kind of primitive buoy where the visible part looks like a broom. They were painted red. Maybe the most literal translation would be a "broom-marker". Prick means mark, spot, dot, speck; also a bull's-eye, and (in sport) a penalty point.

This kind of buoy was also called ruskprick, as in the title of Strindberg's painting. (Ruska means a bunch of twigs.)

Here's a wintry photo of one, by the photographer Gustaf Wilhelm Reimers (1885 - 1963).

[Image source: https://digitaltmuseum.se/021016877561/pa-som-ruskprick ]

These simple kvastprickar are anchored, not solidly fixed into the underwater rock. That's about the only thing I can understand about the diagram below (mariners may do better). It comes from the Svenska kalendern  for 1926  -- evidently a sort of annual of useful (or useless) information, like the Dunlop Book of Facts I used to leaf through as a child.

[Image source: http://runeberg.org/svenskaka/1926/0077.html ]

August Strindberg: Gustav Vasa (1899)

Måns Nilsson and his wife, polishing silver (opening of Act I)

[Image source: https://www.malmostadsteater.se/arkiv/storan-48-49/gustav-vasa . From a 1948-49 production at Malmö Stadsteater.]


A dark, wintry afternoon: four o'clock. The dalesmen gather at Måns Nilsson's house at Kopparberg. The king is coming to Kopparberg, but no-one knows why. The dalesmen supported him in the struggle against Kristian and the Danes; some of them are his personal friends. But they are an independent lot and haven't appreciated the heavy exactions (such as church bells) needed to satisfy the king's Lübeck paymasters. Some say (though this is quickly shushed) that perhaps they picked the wrong side; Kristian certainly made the Swedish nobles suffer, but Gustav makes the Swedish people suffer.

A knock at the door. It isn't the king, but his acting secretary, the reformer Olaus Petri. With him comes Herman Israel the Lübecker, who takes a keen interest in the silver on display. Olaus engages the dalesmen in small talk: How's the mining, how did you cope during the famine? One of the dalesmen is summoned to an interview with the king; then another. The atmosphere becomes increasingly tense. What's happening to our friends? And it becomes ever clearer that Olaus's unruffled chat is leading the dalesmen into making foolish concessions. Then a third summons...

OLAUS (goes to meet the MESSENGER, who whispers to him). Master Stig Larsson [the pastor]  is ordered to go to the King at once!
STIG. Ordered? Who gives orders here?
OLAUS. The King.
MÅNS (springing to his feet). Treachery!
OLAUS. Precisely, treachery and traitors! -- Go, Master, at once, or you'll have to ride bareback!
STIG. Hell!
OLAUS. To Hell! -- Begone!
(MÅNS NILSSON and ANDERS PERSSON rise and make for the door.)
MÅNS. Do you know who I am? that I am a free miner, a friend of the King?
OLAUS. Sit down, then, and be peaceable; if you are the King's friend there's been some mistake! Anders Persson and Måns Nilsson, sit down! No harm shall come to you, nor to anyone else who is innocent! Let the Master go, and don't get excited! What hint has there been of violence here, except from your own bad conscience?
STIG. True! We've done nothing wrong, and no-one has threatened us. -- Calm yourselves, good friends; I shall soon be back! (Goes out.)
MÅNS. You're right!
OLAUS. Throw a stick at the pack and . . .
ANDERS (to MÅNS). We made fools of ourselves! Just keep calm! (Aloud.) You see, Master, one grows suspicious as one gets older, especially when one has seen faith and promises broken one after the other. . . .
OLAUS. I think I see. In times like these, when people change masters as snakes change their skins, a kind of mental unsteadiness may easily arise, pardonable perhaps in the young, but unpardonable in the old and experienced!
MÅNS. One can't talk of old age in connection with the King. He's in the prime of life . . .
OLAUS. And therefore pardonable. . . .
MÅNS (to ANDERS PERSSON). It must be the devil himself!
ANDERS (to MASTER OLAUS). How long have we got to sit here waiting? And what are we waiting for?
OLAUS. For the King's orders, as you know.

A few minutes later, the messenger comes back. He throws three blood-stained coats onto the table.

(text from Gustav Vasa Act I, in C. D. Locock's translation)


*

It's a stunning opening scene, an extraordinary way to begin a play about, as Strindberg claimed,  the only Swedish monarch he unreservedly admired (perhaps he was still in his Nietzsche phase). Not the least of its shocks is the presentation of Olaus Petri, transformed -- and yet not entirely transformed -- from the zealous youth of Strindberg's early play Master Olof. This Olaus (in defiance of historical chronology*) is perceptibly older, a hard-bitten servant of government with the cold eyes of a snake. But not without humanity, nor self-disgust at his own compromises. Strindberg's characters are convincingly many-sided, impossible to reduce to a label.

[*Olaus Petri's recantation and pardon (the basis of Act V of Master Olof) took place in 1540. The Bell rebellion in Dalarna (the basis of Act I of Gustav Vasa) took place seven years earlier, in 1533.]


*

The next scene is the Lübeckers' office in Stockholm.

JAKOB [Jakob Israel, Herman's son] (coldly and slyly). I -- will -- come.
ERIK [Prince Erik, Gustav Vasa's son]. Thanks, friend! (Getting up.) This place really looks like a pawnbroker's!
JAKOB (sharply). Just what I meant before!
ERIK. Then we're agreed on that point at any rate! -- All right: this evening! Do you know Agda?
JAKOB (shortly). No!
ERIK (superciliously giving him two fingers to shake: JAKOB pretends not to notice it). Good-bye! -- Which way did the little pawnbrokers go? (JAKOB does not answer. Haughtily.) Good-bye, Baruch! -- Have you read the book of Baruch? (Goes towards the background, jingling the church vessels as he passes them.)

(from Act II Scene 1)

Erik is a bit unhinged, unfortunate, alienated: the kind of person who is often offensive and aggressive, yet gets forgiven because he's vulnerable and in a confused way intelligent. His sardonic reference to Baruch is typically overdetermined. It might refer to the Lübeckers' collecting of money and silver vessels (cf. Baruch 1:6-8) or perhaps to his "friend"'s name: "He hath found out all the way of knowledge, and hath given it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved" (Baruch 3:36 (KJV)).

In a later scene outside the office:

ERIK. ... Well, Agda or Magda; where's your pawnbroker to-day? (AGDA does not answer.) Do you know the Hansa people are in the habit of butchering little boys in there, and sending them to the Turkish swine?
AGDA. Is that true?
ERIK. Partly, I expect.

(from Act IV, Scene 1)

In Erik's typical scatter-gun offensive way, he seems to be invoking the "blood libel" stories that were a familiar component of medieval (and later) anti-Semitism. Well, the Lübeckers were unpopular foreigners in the Swedish capital, and their business was lending money. (When Jakob first appears, his head is bandaged, the result of an encounter with a street thug.) But Herman Israel (= Harmen Israhel on Wikipedia) was not a Jew: Lübeck, like other free cities in the Hanseatic League, had banned Jews centuries before.

*

The surprising thing is that, after that grisly opening -- and further revelations about, e.g. Gustav's violence to Erik's late mother --, Strindberg does succeed in winning us to some empathy with the king.  One more extract:


(The KING has come in, reading a document. The QUEEN [Gustav's second wife, mother of Johan and Karl] goes towards him with a supplicating gesture.)
KING (hotly).Margareta, if you have any faith in me, cease trying to be a judge in this matter of State. I have investigated it for two years and have not yet come to any conclusion; how then could you understand the matter? -- Go in to the children! I have a word to say to Erik! (The QUEEN goes out.) If you could see yourself now, Erik, you would loathe yourself!
ERIK. I do that, anyhow!
KING. Mere bragging; if you loathed yourself as you are, you would change your ways.
ERIK. I can't remake myself.
KING. Have you tried?
ERIK. I have tried!
KING. Then it's the bad company you keep that works against your good intentions.
ERIK. Göran is no worse than his fellows; but he has the merit of seeing he's no better.
KING. Do you ever consider the fact that you will be King some day?
ERIK. If I do become King all the old bad habits will be forgotten.
KING. There you are wrong again. I have still to go about tidying up what I have spilt. However, if you're unwilling to obey your father as a son, you must do so as a subordinate.
ERIK. The heir to the throne is not a subject!
KING. That is why I said subordinate. All are subordinate to the King.
ERIK. Must one obey blindly?
KING. Yes, so long as you are blind, you mst obey blindly; when your eyes are opened you will obey with open eyes; but obey you shall! -- Wait till it's yours some day to command, and you'll see how much harder that is, and how full of responsibility!
ERIK (mockingly). Aha!
KING (angrily). Idiot! -- Go and wash the dirt off yourself and have your hair combed. Above all, wash that filthy mug of yours and don't go about making my rooms stink. Go! or you shall have a week in the tower to sleep off your debauch; and if that isn't enough you shall lose your ears, so that you can never wear a crown! Is this language you can understand?
ERIK. The law of succession . . .
KING. I arrange my successions as I please! Now you know! -- That's all! Get out!

(from Act III)


*

Gustav Vasa is the first of Strindberg's later historical plays.* He began writing them in 1899, after his recovery from the Inferno period. He turned out the new history plays in quick succession, partly with the intention of establishing himself once for all as Sweden's national author.

[*Some sources say Folkungasagan was written before it, in 1898.]

It's taken me a little while to get accustomed to the way these later history plays go about things. Strindberg is as cavalier about accurate dates and details as Shakespeare was.  He isn't concerned with the elegant plotting of a well-made play. He shows us people talking in modern Swedish, he doesn't trouble himself with archaism or period trappings; he's not very interested in bringing us the flavour of a historical place and time, in the way that e.g. Scott is. At the same time, he does want to tell a story; backgrounds are filled in, with relish, when this arises naturally. The scenes are all dramatic, but not naturalistic. Typically there's some kind of conflict between the actors on stage, not necessarily an open or full-blooded one. There are no moral signposts; people who behave well at one time behave badly at another. The ruthless action of Gustav Vasa is just there. It's uncomfortable that characters we would like to sympathize with often have blood on their hands.

Despite this, Strindberg's hopes were realized, at any rate so far as Gustav Vasa was concerned. While his other late history plays are rather neglected, this one was enthusiastically embraced as a national drama suitable for "blue-yellow" (blå-gula)  occasions. The titanic figure of the King, in his very weaknesses, was a suitable symbol of a heroic past, and the play's wide-flung scenes gave glorious opportunities for a celebration of Merrie Sweden.  Only more recently has the play been seen to have the potential for quite other kinds of treatment.

*

The images below are sourced from: https://www.malmostadsteater.se/arkiv/storan-70-71/gustav-vasa . They come from a production of Gustav Vasa at Malmö Stadsteater in 1970-1971.]

The king Gustav I (Gustav Vasa)

A drunk Prince Erik (right) quarrels with Jakob Israel; Erik's friend Göran Persson in the background (Act II, Scene 2)

Prince Erik is arrested (Act II, Scene 2)

Herman Israel and his son Jakob, with Gustav Vasa in the background (Act III)

Prince Erik "crowns" the flower-seller Karin (Act IV, Scene 1)

Agda talking to Prince Erik's Secretary Göran Persson (Act IV, Scene 1)

Olaus Petri in his study (right), with his son Reginald and wife Kristina (Act IV, Scene 2)

*


"I took as my task, following my master Shakespeare, to depict people both in large and small [i.e. in great matters of state, and in intimate life], not to mince words, to let the history be in the background and to compress historical lengths of time,  in line with the modern theatre's demands to avoid the undramatic form of chronicles and historical narratives .... I've never committed undue violence to historical fidelity, where it concerned things that are common knowledge, because I dislike that way of fabricating historical data and facts. But to compress historical events in a distant period, after the great examples [of Shakespeare, etc], this I have always permitted myself."  (Öppna brev till Intima teatern)


*


Strindberg's plays about Swedish history:

Mäster Olof (1872)
Gillets hemlighet (The Secret of the Guild) (1880)

Gustav Vasa (1899)
Erik XIV (1899)
Folkungasagan (The Saga of the Folkungs) (1899  -- written 1898?)
Gustav Adolf  (1900)
Engelbrekt (1901)
Kristina (1901)
Karl XII (1901)
Gustav III (1902)

A century ago it was a commonplace that Gustav Vasa was the best of the later histories, the others in differing degrees inferior. But that view has gradually shifted. Erik XIV, a brilliant play, has proved the most popular on mainland Europe and in Russia. Some claim Folkungasagan as one of the author's masterpieces. And each of the other plays now has its admirers, with perhaps the exception of Engelbrekt (though Edward S. Franchuk wrote about it at length in his hugely useful PhD thesis Symbolism in the works of August Strindberg, University of Glasgow 1989). 

*

Joan Bulman, in her 1933 book Strindberg and Shakespeare: Shakespeare's Influence on Strindberg's Historical Drama, said that when it came to history plays Strindberg was Shakespeare's undisputed heir. It's an interesting thought.

Strindberg knew Shakespeare's plays well, and Shakespeare's influence is all over Strindberg's history enterprise: for example, the whole conception of a sequence of plays named after successive kings; the range of characters and settings; the mingling of solemnity and comedy. In the case of Gustav Vasa, Strindberg said that one of his models was the domestic scenes in Julius Caesar; you might also be reminded of Henry IV (e.g. in Gustav's interview with Erik, quoted above), or Henry V (Henry's resolute sentencing of Scroop, Cambridge and Grey, his erstwhile friends). Yet the effect is different too. Shakespeare's plays contain a lot of quiet normative signposts, persuading us in what light to regard the various characters and their actions. Strindberg largely eliminates those. His characters retain the capacity to do both good and evil, in the future as well as in the past. (To be fair, you might claim that this is also Shakespearean, if you think of Hamlet.)

*

Vilhelm Moberg wrote:

The Swedish public's view of Gusta Vasa has been deeply influenced by Strindberg's play about this king. The finest of all Strindberg's historical plays, it is my belief that even historians have been swayed by it. The strong man who appears on the stage with a hammer in his hand had a certain basis in reality, and his utterances are cast in the authentic style of the king's own letters. It all sounds thoroughly genuine. Gustav, in his lifetime, may well have spoken just like this. But in one respect this kingly figure is utterly unhistorical. He thanks the All Highest for having punished him; and this is something utterly untypical of the real Gustav. In none of the sources are we told that he ever felt the least remorse for any of his actions, or regarded himself as deserving to be punished for them. None of his broken oaths, none of his sacred promises or solemn assurances, seem ever to have caused him the least twinge of conscience. And indeed on one occasion he expressly defended his actions when he wrote: 'Necessity knows (bryter - lit. 'breaks') no law; not the law of man and at times not even the law of God'. That is to say, he did not even acknowledge God as his judge or as having the right to punish him.

Even on his deathbed there was nothing of the remorseful penitent about Gustav. When his private chaplain and confessor Master Hans came to his death bed and required him to confess his sins, Gustav sent him packing.   ...

A History of the Swedish People, Volume Two translated by Paul Britten Austin (1973; original Swedish publication 1971)

*

August Strindberg, guitarist

[Image source: https://www.wannart.com/ruhunu-kalemine-akitan-yazar-august-strindberg/ ]